the voluntary acts that subsist in Him say of anyone who affirms this, “He is a corporealist”; and so do all the other negationists.
Anyone who denies what Allah and His Messenger have affirmed on the grounds that affirming it entails corporealism faces the same consequence regarding what Allah and His Messenger have affirmed] (1).
These negationists ultimately affirm nothing more than an absolute existence and an essence divested of attributes. Sound reason knows that absolute existence and an essence divested of attributes exist only in the mind, not in extramental reality. The mind can abstract such a notion and conceive the form of divine oneness that they posit, just as it conceives an absolute human being or an absolute animal. Yet not everything conceived by minds is capable of existing in external reality.
This reveals the error of anyone who seeks to establish the possibility of this through rational supposition, as al-Rāzī (2) did when he said (3): “Reason knows that a thing must either occupy space, subsist in something that occupies space, or neither occupy space nor inhere in something that does” (4).
(1) The passage between square brackets is absent from N and M. The text is also incomplete in manuscripts B and A, and it is likely that some material has been omitted. The following is my attempt to supply the missing text based on the context: “Anyone who denies what Allah and His Messenger have affirmed on the grounds that affirming it entails corporealism [faces that same implication regarding everything Allah and His Messenger have affirmed. If a Mu'tazilite affirms some attributes but not others—such as knowledge, life, and power—on the grounds that these attributes do not entail corporealism, he contradicts himself. According to his own doctrine, these attributes also entail corporealism. He must therefore either deny these attributes as well or affirm everything that Allah and His Messenger have affirmed].”
(2) A and B read: “al-Rāzī and others.”
(3) A and B read: “It is said”; this is an error.
(4) Concerning “that which occupies space,” al-Rāzī states in his book Asās al-Taqdīs fī 'Ilm al-Kalām, p. 6, Mustafā al-Halabī edition, 1354/1935: “Third: When we say that an existent must either occupy space, inhere in something that occupies space, or neither occupy space nor inhere in something that occupies space, we find that reason conclusively affirms the validity of this division.”